


it's not warm when she's away

by AmyDancepantsPeralta



Series: without you, I'm nothing (one shot tumblr prompts) [7]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, If Amy had gone to Major Crimes, Set after Operation Broken Feather, Tumblr Prompt, a little angsty, fluff because I can't live without it, pining!jake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 16:44:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21057674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyDancepantsPeralta/pseuds/AmyDancepantsPeralta
Summary: “Do whatever you want.  You know … it’s your life.”Jake has played over those nine words so many times, they had long since lost their meaning.  The dismissive tone stings like it would have the first time Amy heard them, the casual shrug of his shoulders betraying what he truly felt as she gives him a chance - one last chance to say how hereally feels.  One last chance to ask her to stay, before she walked away forever.





	it's not warm when she's away

**Author's Note:**

> A quick Tumblr prompt response to: _"He should have said something. Because now she's gone to work for the Special Victims Unit, and he's pretty sure she took a part of his soul with her."_
> 
> For @storyinmyeyes 😊

****

it’s not warm when she’s away

****

****  


“Do whatever you want. You know … it’s your life.”

Jake has played over those nine words so many times, they had long since lost their meaning. The dismissive tone stings like it would have the first time Amy heard them, the casual shrug of his shoulders betraying what he truly felt as she gives him a chance - one last chance to say how he _really feels_. One last chance to ask her to stay, before she walked away forever. 

He had been so damn focused on the case - so _sure_ that they were going to find some kind of key evidence that would give them that slam dunk Peralta Guarantee he’d made, that he never stopped to consider that that afternoon could be the very last time they worked together. 

But they never found the suspect’s jacket, and the case remained unsolved. And by the end of the day, Amy Santiago had been accepted into the Special Victims Unit. 

It had been three months since she’d left, her meticulously organised desk quickly turning into a haphazard dumping ground of rejected case files as the precinct waits for a new transfer to arrive. There had been a rotation of partners for Jake, skipping from Boyle to Diaz, the occasional ring-in from the Nine Eight and one disastrous fortnight with Hitchcock and Scully. He felt empty, as though a part of him was missing, and as the days wore on he realised that was precisely the problem. This woman, with her perfectly arranged desk and her dark hair that somehow always managed to catch the light, had become a part of his world so much that without her, everything else seemed grey and lifeless.

He finds himself wearing an extra shirt under his plaid these days, his complaints about the coldness of the office forever falling on deaf ears. Officer Evans even laughs at him one afternoon, when he clocks the detective rubbing his hands together to stay warm, joking that perhaps Santiago had left her perpetual coldness behind for Jake to inherit. He had shrugged Evans off, never understanding why the others insisted on calling her cold. Yes, she enjoyed an extra blanket or two at outdoor gatherings, but if you asked him, Amy Santiago was the opposite of cold. She was literal sunshine - warm eyes and sparkling laughter wrapped up in a beautiful soul - and he missed her, every damn day. 

*

It’s 11am on a mundane Wednesday when he hears an officer mention that the SVU were on their way to the precinct. His ears perk up at the words and he tugs at the collar of his jacket nervously, the notion of being in the same room as her suddenly too much to bear. He tells himself that he needs to relax - it might not even be her that visits, after all - but his racing heart just will not calm down, and he paces the floor of the bullpen seven times over before Rosa finally tells him to _sit the hell down_.

The numbers on the arrest report occupying his computer screen are beginning to blur when he hears her arrive, the gentle but deliberate cadence of her step unmistakable as she exits the elevator. There had been an invisible string, all this time, that had tied his heart to hers, and for the first time in three months he felt it tighten - felt her presence before he dared to turn, felt the racing thump fall into a comfortable rhythm because _finally, she was home_.

Amy’s smiling at him when he turns around, his flimsy attempt at a casual glance falling apart the instant his eyes catch hers. His face nearly splits in half with the size of his grin, already getting up out of his chair and halfway across the floor before he even realises he’s moving. She was a magnetic force for him, the pull of their hearts dragging him closer without any protest, and all he can think is _at last_.

There are a million words that he wants to say, all of them fighting for the starring role, when Boyle pops up between them, a bag of Fermented Something in one hand and the other reaching out for a hug. She keeps her face even, a skill long since mastered from her days at the Nine Nine, and Jake stifles his laughter as he takes in her subtle step backwards. 

She’s whisked away by Boyle and Diaz before they even have a chance to talk, and Jake is quickly reminded that she is here on official duty only, and as a team member of Major Crimes division will probably leave just as quickly as she arrived; once she’s acquired the case files from her former colleagues. To nobody’s surprise, she stays all afternoon, locked up in the briefing room as the trio work together to bring down bad guy. He sees glimpses of her when the door occasionally opens for a coffee or bathroom break, but she never moves from her position at the desk. 

He stays an hour or two past his finish time, unwilling to give up the chance to talk to her one last time, until Terry flexes his ample muscles towards the elevator and orders Jake’s evacuation. The door to the briefing room is still closed as his feet shuffle past, pausing with a wish for courage before accepting their fate. 

It’s well past 9pm when she finds him at Shaw’s, slumped into a booth in the far corner as he sips on his whiskey and stares blankly at unfunny videos on his phone. He had felt a tug on his heart, but foolishly had chalked it up to the liquor settling into his veins, and his phone drops with a clatter to the sticky table when suddenly she is sitting across from him. 

She barely lets out a _sorry if I’m interrupting_ before Gina is shuffling into the booth next to him, casting her purse into the gap between Jake and the wall as she makes room for Rosa, Charles sliding in to sit next to Amy, and suddenly Jake’s glass isn’t the only one on the table. 

It feels like old times, laughter filling the once silent booth as stories of old and new are retold. Memories are given elaborate twists as the empty bottles build up, and in all honesty he’s trying really hard not to stare, but he can’t believe he never noticed how beautiful Amy was until it was far too late. 

He knows that he screwed up when he didn’t encourage her to stay at the Nine Nine. He knew it thirty-five seconds after she returned from her interview, handing in her notice of transfer to Holt with a sad smile, and he knows it now as the five of them clink their glasses together. There’s a pull between them, the same invisible string stretched tight across the table, and Jake wishes on all the glow-in-the-dark stars of his childhood bedroom’s ceiling that there was some way that he could make Amy stay this time.

They’re both a little tipsy when they finally leave the bar, or rather get pushed out as Hank flips over the sign in the window from Open to Closed while they stumble onto the footpath. The rest of their squad - or rather, Jake’s squad now - had long since given up on them, retiring to their homes when they realised that tonight was for Jake and Amy, and Jake and Amy only. 

Her laughter bounces off of the parked cars as she races towards the faded chalk outline of a game of hopscotch, ponytail jerking upwards as she hops along the squares, turning back to Jake with an accomplished smile when she reaches the top. She’s not ready to go home yet, she announces, and it’s the best thing Jake has heard all day, because there is not a chance he’s ready for this to be over again.

It isn’t long before his jacket is wrapped around Amy’s shoulders, ponytail abandoned to keep her neck warm, the two of them taking turns to point out buildings or alleyways that have been involved in cases of theirs as they walked around the city. They reminisce over their biggest solves - the ones that had kept them up until the early hours - and Jake lays out the details of a file that had landed on his desk earlier that day. She asks all the questions he had known she would ask, and he shoots back with answer after answer until finally she nudges him with her elbow, raising one eyebrow when he looks back at her and telling him that _he already knew the answer to this case_, that _he should just trust his gut_, because as much as she hated to admit it, he was rarely wrong.

He shrugs, mumbling that _he doesn’t always get it right_, and studies the ground for the rest of the block. 

They pass an old park, long since abandoned, and Amy climbs the staggered brick wall that had once made up the fence line, smiling in triumph as she stands a few feet taller than him. She seems relaxed, and he tells her as such, laughing as she holds out both arms for balance in stepping along the thin line, looking like a child playing Airplane while turning back towards him. Her arms drop and she hesitates, a silence falling over them for a minute before she tucks her hair behind both ears and tells him that this is the first time she’s felt relaxed in months. 

Her feet bump into the brick as they swing back and forth, sitting down and waiting until Jake has settled in beside her before telling him all about her time in Major Crimes. How it was everything and nothing like she’d expected. That she’d made some excellent contacts, and had played an integral role in the conviction of some particularly unsavoury perps. Special Victims Unit was heavy, she admitted with a sigh - they did things _differently_, and not always to the letter, and it was a struggle to find a way to fall into line. And finally, with a defeated shrug, she tells him that she misses the Nine Nine every single day. 

Jake’s heart is somewhere up the top of his throat, trying desperately to sound casual when he tells her that the detective filling her role was having issues with their transfer, that the legality of some sort of form or whatnot kept delaying their arrival. Her desk, he mentions with a nudge of his shoulder against his, is still empty, and Amy looks up, sheepishly admitting that she hadn’t left the briefing room all day for fear of seeing her desk with somebody else’s name on it. 

Eventually he stands, reaching his hand out for assistance as she follows suit, and when their palms press together he links their fingers with a gentle squeeze. Forged as one, their hands fall to the space between them as their footsteps echo across the empty sidewalks that lead to Amy’s apartment.

He wants to tell her that he’s missed her more than words can say. Keeps racking his brain, trying to think of the right way to let her know that the date that resulted from him winning the bet had fallen into the Good Date list for a million reasons, and that none of them had _anything_ to do with getting the bad guy. 

She offers him his jacket back when they reach her front door, and he takes it from her hand but doesn’t put it on. For the first time in a long time, he was immune to the cold. Plus, there was a good chance that his jacket smelled like her now, and he wasn’t quite ready to lose that.

The air crackles between them as she pulls him in for a hug, hand lingering at the back of his neck for a beat before pulling away completely, tugging at his heart and waving goodnight one last time before walking through her door. It’s only five minutes into the walk back to his apartment before his phone rings, and Amy is on the other end, calling with a sudden epiphany of an anecdote she’d forgotten to tell him and _knows_ he will love. 

They talk until sunrise, Jake moving from kitchen counter to couch to bed within his studio apartment, neither of them quite ready to acknowledge the time until their throats are raspy from a lack of sleep. It had only been three months, but to them, it had felt like a lifetime, and there was _so much_ to say.

Finally, she hangs up, securing the confirmation of lunch plans later that very day, and Jake grips the phone in his hand for a moment, staring at the blank screen and remembering the feeling of her hand in his as they walked the streets of Brooklyn. His apartment is bright with light from unclosed blinds when he eventually looks up, because he hadn’t been home since nearly the same time yesterday, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, Jake felt the warm of the sunlight on his face. He angles his face higher, absorbing the rays as they wash over his home, smiling at the sense of peace that falls over him as the exhaustion finally takes over, back hitting the mattress without a second to waste.

He sets an alarm on his phone, then places it out of reach for him to avoid being switched off in a future sleepy haze, and with a contented smile he closes his eyes. Today was a new day, a day which promised so many great possibilities, and there was no way that he was going to let happiness slip through his fingers again.

**Author's Note:**

> _* BONUS MINI-EPILOGUE IN THE COMMENTS * _
> 
> Ok so hopefully you are all enjoying these short little one-shots while we wait (im)patiently for the new season to come out!
> 
> I'm always excited to see/hear what you think, so if you feel comfortable doing so, feel free to leave comments/kudos! I love them dearly ♥️
> 
> (title from Ain't No Sunshine, by various artists - take your pick!)
> 
> Feel free to come say hi to me on Tumblr - I'm @amydancepants-peralta 💕


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